Gravity Sings
by stargazercmc
Summary: SamJack. Apocafic. General Jack O’Neill headed west five months after the world ended.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.  
**Notes:** Written for the apocalypse-kree ficathon. Thanks to splash-the-cat, who makes me look much better than I am, and to auntiemeesh for throwing in her two cents. They collectively rock the casbah. Thanks also to moonshayde (who doesn't even read apocafic) for letting me babble via IM until I bounced out the idea for this fic.

* * *

_We make our own gravity to give weight to things.  
Then things fall and they break and gravity sings.  
Ani DiFranco

* * *

_

If Sam turned the glass just so, slid it to just the right spot, she could make the scotch reflect ripples on the table that reminded her of the Stargate's event horizon. There was plenty of sunlight streaming through the cabin window to refract the patterns onto the wooden surface.

She traced her fingers over the table where the light fell through the tumbler. "Amber," she said to no one. Not blue. Not blue for months now. Never blue again.

She brought the glass to her lips and drained away the memory.

* * *

General Jack O'Neill headed west five months after the world ended. 

The world's worst attack had come without warning. Ninety-five percent of the Earth's population gone within 14 hours of the first report of a massive cloud that originated near Colorado Springs.

No bodies. No explanation. Just piles of dust.

Jack tried to stay in the Washington area as long as possible, assess what was still there and what he could do. Everyone associated with the Stargate program in D.C. was gone, and there was little government structure left. Anarchy took hold within a week, and Washington became a ghost town as people drifted out to more rural areas looking for food, other people and loved ones.

Jack waited for an alien race to claim responsibility or to hear from someone at the SGC. No one ever came, and the game changed from protection to survival. With the Asgard gone, Jack had nowhere to turn for help or retribution. So eventually, Jack grabbed a motorcycle and a warm coat, siphoned some extra gas, and headed west.

* * *

Of all the people Jack expected to see in a roadside diner in Kentucky, the least likely person was Pete Shanahan. It was a surreal moment to see the man behind a counter cooking for a handful of folks sitting at the candlelit bar. Foregoing the built-in griddle, Shanahan had a series of Coleman grills with propane tanks sitting on a worn-down countertop. Since most areas Jack passed through were without power, he thought it an ingenious, if non-elegant, solution. 

Jack took an empty seat at the bar and waited for Pete to turn around.

"Katy, here ya go. Over easy. Want some toast with…" Pete was visibly surprised to see Jack sitting at the counter. "I'll be damned. General O'Neill?" Pete set the plate down in front of a teenage girl with long brown hair and wiped his hands on his pants. He came around the counter and held his hand out.

Jack shook hands with Pete. "Shanahan," he said.

"What are you… Damn, man. It's good to see a familiar face," said Pete. "Something to eat?" he offered. Jack nodded and sat back down at the bar.

"Eggs?" said Pete. "We have a pretty steady supply of them from the chicken farm here in town. I'd offer chicken, but we'd have to make a run to the creek for it," he said.

Jack took in that comment. They'd obviously established some sort of order here. "Eggs are fine," he said. "Scrambled."

Back behind the counter, Pete cracked a couple of eggs into a mixing bowl. ". Have you heard anything from Sam?" Pete looked up and Jack saw the shadowed worry in his eyes. "I don't know if she's…" He started again, "She hasn't contacted me since… just what did happen anyway, O'Neill?" His friendly tone was edged with a touch of bitterness and maybe a slight shade of blame.

"I'm not sure, Pete." Shanahan seemed either skeptical or surprised, but he said nothing as he turned and started preparing Jack's eggs.

Pete's easy-going manner from a few minutes earlier shifted into uneasy silence as he cooked. Jack noted the man had lost weight and had a slightly angular look, an edge not formerly present when Jack last saw him at Jacob's funeral. Unwilling to scrutinize Carter's ex too closely, Jack looked around the diner to see the consolidation of cooking supplies – grills, sterno cans, boxes of canned and dry goods. Pete handed Jack his plate, and Jack saw him size up his reaction to the makeshift food shelter.

"Quite the setup you've got here, Shanahan," Jack said. He bit into a forkful of eggs as Pete set a capped bottle of water down in front of him. A couple got up from the bar and thanked Pete. "Same time tomorrow?" Pete said, and the couple nodded before heading out the door with a flashlight.

"We manage," said Pete. "It's easy when you don't have to worry about paying for anything. Getting around the 'no power' thing is the real trick, but country folk can survive, right?"

"Country folk?" Jack raised an eyebrow. "Weren't you a cop in Denver?"

"I was raised here," said Pete. "Katy is my brother's daughter. After… whatever, I made my way this direction to see if anything was left of my family. She's the only one I've found."

"And you haven't heard from Carter?" said Jack, trying to keep his tone neutral. He finished off his eggs under Pete's close scrutiny.

"Nothing," said Pete. "You done?" Jack nodded. "I have a feeling we should go back to my place and talk."

* * *

Pete ushered Jack into the house, a sprawling two-story home with a staircase just inside the front door. Pete led him to the living room. "Just let me get some of the candles lit," he said. "Saves on batteries." 

Katy stuck her head into the room. "Uncle Pete, I'm heading up to bed, OK?"

"Sure thing, sugar. G'night," Pete said.

"Nice meeting you," Katy said to Jack. She waved before disappearing up the stairs.

"You too," Jack called after her.

Pete struck a match and lit three candles on various end tables. He gestured for Jack to sit down, and Jack took a seat on the roomy sofa. Pete pulled a bottle of whiskey from under a nearby cabinet and grabbed two glasses. He held the glasses up and Jack nodded. "She seems like a good kid," he said.

Pete poured two moderate pulls of Jack Daniels and had a seat in a chair opposite O'Neill. "So," he began. "Just what in the fuck happened to the world, General?"

Jack decided 'straightforward' was the best approach. "I don't know, Pete."

"I had hoped you'd know about Sam," said Pete. Jack felt a pit in his stomach. Not knowing about Sam, or any of the rest of his former team, had given him plenty of restless thoughts. "I tried to get to Colorado Springs right after, but there was so much chaos. And I went west to check on my parents." His voice shook. "While I was out there, I stopped to see about Mark. He didn't…" Pete sat back in his chair. "You really don't know what happened to her?" He sounded lost.

Jack could identify. "I haven't heard from any of them," he said quietly.

"We'll be counting the cost from this one for a long time, won't we?" Pete asked.

In response, Jack swirled the last of the Jack Daniels in his glass.

* * *

Jack stayed for two days. On the third day, he told Pete he was moving on. "I need to know what happened," he said simply. 

Pete understood. As Jack was leaving, Pete said, "If you… when you find Sam, tell her I love her. That she'll always have a place here with me, if she wants it." Jack recognized the slightly broken tone. Lord knows he had felt that way enough recently.

Jack shook Pete's hand and handed him a piece of paper with an address. "This is where I'm heading, eventually," he said.

"Minnesota?" asked Pete.

"I have some property there," Jack replied. "I figure maybe they'll… drift that way."

* * *

Sam had made a game out of trying to get the elk to come closer to the cabin. At first, she tried piles of mulch hay from the storage shed, placing them near the lake's edge where it would see them when getting water. When that wasn't effective, she tried vegetable scraps from her stockpile of canned goods. It wasn't like she was eating much, anyway, so why not share? 

Cliché as it was, carrots finally got the elk's attention. Once he made a habit of coming up about midway through the yard, Sam left the vegetables in the same place. She would start her morning around sunrise each day, watching him from the swing on the porch and thinking of anything to fill the time.

Sometimes, she took a notebook with her. She would fill it with formulas, trying to solve riddles she never had time to complete. Would one of these formulas have changed anything? She didn't think so, but the doubt kept her active.

Sam wanted for nothing; she had food, shelter and isolation enough to make penance.

* * *

Sitting at an empty gas station in Joplin, Missouri, Jack weighed his options. 

Heading further west would take him to Colorado. The Stargate was there. Maybe. Answers were there. Again, maybe. Would anyone else be there? And if they were, would it matter? With no clear enemy to fight and no realistic means of fighting them, would heading for Cheyenne Mountain be the best course of action?

If the gate was working, Jack could go to the Alpha site and find out what remained of the SGC network, maybe figure out who or what had done this. He wondered about his former team and whether or not they were off-world when things went down. Realistically, he had no way of knowing if they had even survived what Katy had referred to as The Dusting.

The thought that any of his people were in the dust that sometimes choked him as he rode made his stomach churn.

North was the cabin. The cabin had supplies: a stockpile of munitions and survival equipment stored from days long ago when having a definitive exit strategy was a requirement of the job. There was also the unspoken contingency plan with SG-1; in a pinch, fishing was never a bad idea.

Jack kicked his bike back to life, turned north on to Highway 71 and made his way towards Iowa.

* * *

Sam's daily routine was simple. After mornings on the swing, Sam walked as far as she could safely go down the snowy road towards the mailbox, eight miles away. If she needed supplies, she'd go ahead and walk the extra three miles into town, but with no plows to make the path easy, she tried to make those trips rare. The stores there were sparse but mostly abandoned. Of the residents that had previously lived there, only three or four remained. Most of them expressed plans to head out soon to look for scattered family. Sam figured she would have the entire town to herself within the year. 

Just her, the cabin, the elk and the stars.

In the early evenings, Sam liked to take a drink or two outside on the dock and sit by the thawing lake. She wouldn't have much – her stopping point was when she messed up the order of the Periodic Table of the Elements three times. The world had nothing more basic to offer, she thought, than the elements. And basic is what she needed right now. Yes. Elements. And scotch.

"Rutheniumum, Rhodium, Palladium," she chanted. "Shilver, Camium, Cam…" She thought of Cameron Mitchell with his twinkling blue eyes and sense of humor. She let herself remember his face, remember how he had opened those blue eyes wide in surprise just before… she took another drink. "CAD-mium, Indium, Tin, Antin… Antin…"

"Antimony," said a male voice, and she whipped around.

Jack O'Neill. Standing on her, well, technically, his dock. Alive. Not dust.

* * *

Jack ran out of gas about three miles out from the cabin. He grabbed his pack and his pistol and started walking. The stillness over the white-spotted mud patches was eerily serene after miles of roaring engine. 

It was shaping up to be a clear evening, and after so many hours on the bike, Jack didn't mind the walk as dark settled in and the stars became visible. He pinpointed the constellations and let them be his companion on the hike.

He was about to round the corner and head into the cabin when he heard a sing-song voice on the breeze coming from the lake. Definitely Carter. Jack strained for Daniel's counterpoint or Teal'c's bass, but there was only Carter chanting. Her voice was enough to quicken his pace and his heart rate after months of not knowing the fate of his friends.

She was on the dock, silhouetted at the end of it, perched with her boots dangling over a patch of ice. He stood a moment, just drinking in the sight of her profile. He could hear her clearly now, and he wanted to laugh. Carter was still a geek even when she was drunk.

* * *

"You're… you're really alive?" she said. 

"It would appear so," he said, reaching out to help her up.

"But Daniel said…" She grabbed his hand and pulled herself up halfway before falling back.

"Whoa, Carter. No operating heavy machinery for you." He gave her his other hand and pulled. This time she came up and landed in his arms.

"You're here. You're really here." Sam pressed her head to his chest, wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly. The enormity of the moment hit him, and any previous humor in the situation fled.

"I'm here, Sam," he whispered. "We're here."

They stayed on the dock under the stars until Orion was high in the night sky.

* * *

When Jack woke the next morning, he dressed and found Sam outside on the swing. Her brow was furrowed and she was furiously scribbling in a notebook, so he went back in and rifled for supplies. Jack reached in a high cabinet and pulled down a percolating coffee pot. _At least she found the pump_, he thought, as he poured water into the pot from the plastic jug he found near the sink. He set the pot over the rig Carter had created from his wood-burning stove. A quick search in a lower cabinet helped him find the coffee grounds, and he added those to the percolator. 

After a few minutes, Sam stuck her head inside. "Do I smell coffee?" she said. He handed her a cup and moved to the table with his own.

"So what's dribbling from your brain onto the notepad?" he asked.

She sat down across from him and said, "Do you have any idea how good it is to hear someone else's voice, sir?"

"Sir?" he said. "Carter, we're so far away from 'sir' right now that I don't even know how to respond to that."

"Jack," she said, trying the taste of it. "So, Jack. What took you so long?" She looked up and there was no smile anymore. He recognized the desperate look from the night before.

"Carter," he started. "What happened? Where is everyone? Was it the Ori?" The looking up and down stuff is distractingly repetitive.

"Gone." Her voice cracked. She took a slow sip of her coffee.

"All of them?" he prodded.

"Teal'c and Vala made it. They were headed to Kansas, last I saw of them," she said. "And Siler. A handful of others…" she tapered off.

"Daniel?" he asked, fearing the worst but needing to know.

She shook her head. "He… he…" Jack said nothing while she collected herself.

After a couple of breaths, she continued. "Jack, it was the Ori." She looked at him with clear, pained eyes. "And they used Daniel to do it." Jack's stomach lurched. "They planted a trigger in him with some bio-weapon, and he… exploded inside the SGC."

Jack started pacing the room. "We need to go to Cheyenne Mountain. We need to get the gate going, find some place to start hunting. Get in touch with Atlantis."

"Sir," she said. "We can't."

"What do you mean we can't?" he said, raising his voice. "We can't just sit here. I can't sit around and do nothing anymore." He started gathering things into his pack from the couch. "I've already wasted enough time dicking around in Washington." He zipped the bag and carried it back over to the table. "Are you going with me or what?" He was practically yelling at her now and she flinched.

"Dammit," he said under his breath. He quieted his tone. "Sam…" She took a long draw on the coffee and held the cup to her forehead. "Sam, we need to move. We have to get back to the SGC and get to the Alpha site."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," she said from under the cup. "Jack, we can't go anywhere. When we woke from the explosion, the gate was gone."

The sound of morning crickets provided a mocking soundtrack of life carrying on outside the cabin. He dropped his bag.

"Gone," he finally echoed. Jack sat back down and let the chair hold his collapsed weight. The adrenaline rush crashed down on him, bringing despair.

Sam crouched in front of him. "We're stuck on Earth."

* * *

Jack noted Sam's daily routine and decided to create one of his own. By the time she returned from her morning walk, he would be out behind the small shed chopping firewood. He had not said much since that first morning, taking his therapy instead by hacking as many downed trees as he could find in the surrounding woods. 

At night, he would follow her out to the dock and sit on the end, staring out over the water and into the sunset. Sometimes they would see Sam's elk, which Jack called "Bucko," to Sam's chagrin. The two would talk about dwindling townsfolk, plan how to best prepare for the winter and wonder what Teal'c and Vala were up to.

"They went searching for Cam's parents," Sam explained. "They wanted to take his remains…" She stopped and picked up the tumbler beside her and took a sip. "Vala said he and his parents were very close."

When Jack told her about his trip he watched her face closely when he mentioned Shanahan, but her only reaction was relief that Pete was alive. When he said that Pete would not be averse to her joining him, she bit her lower lip, but all she said was, "I'll keep that in mind." Jack was perversely pleased she continued to stay where she was. If she had thoughts of joining Shanahan, she was keeping them to herself since the topic never came up again.

What Jack really craved was answers. He desperately wanted Teal'c to return because he'd had given up on getting anything more from Carter. The more he pressed, the more she clammed up. Jack asked her about Daniel, but Sam wouldn't talk about it much but to say that she wasn't sure exactly when they lost him to the Ori mask he wore. Even when Jack told her about her brother and his family, she closely guarded her grief. During the day, she went about routine tasks. It was easy to pretend that things could be normal again, and Carter seemed to be giving normalcy her dead-level best. But the muffled sounds of crying he heard through the walls of the guest bedroom where he slept let him know that she was struggling, too.

A man surrounded by irony most of his life, Jack could appreciate the dark humor in his situation: here he was with all the time in the world to fish (and living with a beautiful, smart woman), and all he really knew from day to day was devastating loss and bewilderment at what to do about it. Anger was satisfying, if futile, but two cords of wood later and even it was somewhat tempered.

Close proximity led to brief spats, Jack saw a spark of the Carter of old.

"Dammit, Jack, why didn't you refill the jugs?" Sam emptied most of the water into the tub on the porch where he was setting out clothing to be washed. "And hey, I need clean clothes, too, you know."

"What, are your arms broken?" Jack sorted his laundry now on the deck table into colors.

"It's not hard, you know," she said. "You take them to the pump, you refill them, you bring them back."

Jack held up a pair of non-matched socks in response. Muttering under her breath, she took the jugs to the nearby pump, priming it with a small amount of water left in one of the larger ones.

"Awful mouthy, aren't we, Colonel?" he yelled after her. He went back into the cabin and grabbed another small stack of clothes, deliberately ignoring anything of Sam's. Propping the screen door open with his leg, he snagged the bar of soap before setting the remaining clothes in his hand on the table.

Which was suddenly wet. Along with the back of his shirt, his hat, the hair underneath it, and the top of his pants. He turned, sputtering, to find Carter setting down a small jug. The other larger one she had carried, he noted, was decidedly empty.

"Oops, _General_," she said and gave him a 100 megawatt grin. He smirked back. Her smile changed to a nervous look. "Um, Jack?" He walked towards her slowly, deliberately.

"Carter," he said.

"I was just… you know, um, teasing?" she said.

"I know." He kept his slow pace in her direction but grabbed the smaller jug from the porch along the way.

"Jack, forgiven, right?" she said, retreating into the yard. "I mean, I was thinking that I don't mind doing the laundry so much if you'll take care of the dishes…"

"Oh, I forgive you, all right," he said. "And sure, we can switch." He stopped at the edge of the porch with the jug hefted in his left hand. She brightened up. "Just one thing, though."

"Yeah?" she said.

"You are so toast!" he said, making a break for her. He chased her around the perimeter of the yard, grabbing her around the waist just before she made it to the dock. They both let out an "oomph" as it turned into a tackle. He made a big production of pouring water all over her squirming body as they wrestled in the grass.

She finally knocked the bottle out of his hands, but he managed to pin her before she could escape. They were both drenched, muddy and covered in brown grass, but when she dissolved into giggles, Jack smiled in spite of the cold mud creeping down the back of his pants

"Bully," she said once she caught her breath.

"Nag," he grumbled. The moment stretched and transformed into the old, familiar undercurrent of nervous energy between them when Jack realized very suddenly that there was a wet, happy Carter underneath him. _Oh, that_, he thought. His immediate reaction was to shove it back in the corner of his mind with the rest of his can't-haves, but then he realized that he didn't have a compelling reason anymore to hold that part of him back.

Bucko broke the moment when the elk made its way to the lake's edge and started to drink.

"Guess we didn't scare him off, huh?" said Jack, rolling off to the side. His mind was whirling with his recent epiphany, but he knew it was too soon to discuss it. The implications of their situation floored him, and for the first time, he was scared to realize he had nothing to hide behind when it came to Sam. He needed time to think things through, though, and he knew Sam still hadn't come to terms with the larger world just yet.

Sam got up and started brushing grass off her wet clothing. She glanced askance at Jack, who was still sitting on the ground. "No," she said. "We didn't." She picked up the now-empty jug from the grass and walked back towards the porch.

That night, Jack brought his telescope out to the dock. They took turns with the moon and stars and enjoyed the simple magic in naming spring constellations: Libra, Ursa Major, Scorpius. Sam told Jack about her first experience flying at night, and Jack told her about his college physics professor. The night spread out lazily before them, and the air held no chill.


	2. Chapter 2

When summer began, Sam and Jack turned their attention to preparing for another winter. Sam had used a generator to provide heat for the colder months, but the lack of gasoline reserves would be a real problem if they tried to rely on it for another winter.

"Actually, I may have an idea about getting us some steady power," Sam said. "I think if we can pipe some water from the lake, we might be able to rig together a waterwheel as a source for the generator. That way, we wouldn't have to depend on gas for it."

"But what about winter?" Jack said. "Won't it freeze over?"

"I thought of that, too. But I think we can create a running water source if we tap into the stream," she said. "We may have to use gas during the harshest part of winter, but I think it the moving water will keep us in good shape for most of the year," she said.

"Let's do it," said Jack. "There's no more snow, and I'm getting tired of warm beer."

She grinned at him and starting sketching out plans.

The first part of the plan involved planking out a wheel. Sam and Jack fell into a steady rhythm – Jack cut and sawed planks, and Sam put together the structure. They were two weeks into construction when Jack heard Carter yelp.

"Carter?" he said. "You okay?" He went to the four-foot structure where Sam was sucking on her index finger.

"Yesh, I jush accshudentally drot thish peesh and ott my fee-ah inshtead," she mumbled around her finger.

"Let me see." He pulled her finger out of her mouth and examined it. "Seems okay," he said, "but it may bruise." He turned her hand in his, tracing either side of the slightly damp finger. "Can you bend it?" he asked. Wincing slightly she managed to touch her fingertip almost to her palm.

Jack gently massaged her finger up and down its length. "I think it's okay," she said. Her voice was breathy, and Jack lowered her hand down to her side before releasing it.

"Why don't I help you with that plank?" He picked up the board and held it up against the frame of the wheel. When she ducked under his arm to nail it into place, he was suddenly aware of just how close she was to him.

He leaned close, wondering if his breath tickled the side of her neck. "There," he said. "Better?"

She swayed back against him. "Better," she said. When her shoulders pressed against his chest, he tilted his head slightly and nuzzled her neck with his nose.

Sam jumped, almost clocking him in the nose with the back of her head, and broke away. "I'm getting some water," she said. "Want some?" Her tone was too bright for the casual air she affected.

"Yeah, water," he muttered. He let out a quick breath of frustration between his teeth but decided to play things casual. "Wait. Does this involve a jug full of it in any way, shape or form?" he called to her retreating back.

She kept going, but he saw her shaking her head. Smiling, he walked back over to his saw and picked up where he left off.

* * *

With the wheel finished, their next task was tapping into the nearby stream to provide a steady water flow. The plan was to lay pipe from the stream to the paddlewheel works, forcing constant flow via the piping. To do so, Sam and Jack were digging a trench for where the new pipe needed to be laid over to the paddlewheel.

The work was hot and thankless; flies buzzed around them as sweat and grime collected on their skin. Jack took stock of where they were. "Carter," he said. "Are we getting this right? Looks a little crooked to me."

Sam peeked out of the ditch. Her cheeks were pink from being in the sun too much. "It's fine, Jack," she said. "We traced it with the string, remember?" She leaned against her shovel handle and wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing dirt across her cheekbone.

"I know," he said. "But I really think it looks crooked."

"Considering we have it three-quarters done," she said, "don't you think it's a little too late to worry about that?"

"I just want this done right." Jack climbed out of his trench and began scrutinizing the line they had staked off.

She rolled her eyes at him and began digging again.

"Yeah, see here?" he continued. "I think right here is where you messed up."

"Where I… what did I do again?" She jammed her shovel into the dirt harder than necessary.

"If you fill in what you're doing now, we can move this a few inches and - hey!" Jack almost toppled over when a clod of soft dirt exploded against his temple.

"Oh, that's it," he said. "It's on." He grabbed a handful of dirt and clenched it into a ball, ducking when Carter lobbed another handful of dirt at him. He nailed her in the shoulder, and apparently giving up on long-range weapons, she charged him.

Hooking an arm around his bicep, she smeared mud down his neck. He felt the cool plop as it landed inside his shirt and down his back. He retaliated by streaked earth on her face and pretended to edge it near her mouth.

"Oh no, you don't," she said, and before Jack could escape, she had capped his nose with a handful of dirt.

"Time for you to clean up, dontcha think?" he said. He grabbed Sam and flung her over his shoulder. Before she could kick her way down, Jack made his way to the shore of the lake, waded out a few feet and tossed her in with a loud splash.

Jack, still standing in the water, laughed as she sputtered her way back up, yelling all of the ways she was trained to injure him. Pretty soon Jack was ducking her shoes as she chucked them to shore.

"Missed me," he said. The water felt great after the hours working in the hot sun, so Jack stripped off his own shoes and his filthy shirt and waded deeper.

"If I wanted to hit you, you'd be unconscious." Sam splashed him, starting a water war that ended when Sam came back up from a dunking and flipped on her back to float. Jack watched before starting an easy breaststroke towards the middle of the lake.

He stopped swimming near the center, treading water easily. The sun was high over the trees, and geese honked in the distant rushes. The land and its inhabitants carried on their normal activities, completely oblivious to the problems of the human race.

Jack supposed this fact should make him pity their fates, but for the first time in almost a year, he felt peace.

"Penny?" said Sam as she swam up behind him.

_Sam_, he thought. When had she become equal parts Carter _and_Sam?

"I was just thinking about how much I love this place. How if the world as we knew it had to end, that I'm glad this is where I landed." Twisting around to face her, he decided his time was now. "And how none of it means a damn without you here with me."

Sam's mouth dropped open in surprise. Jack swam slowly closer, giving her plenty of time to back off. When she didn't break away, he pulled her into an embrace and brought his lips to hers.

Kissing Carter was a smolder of warmth against the chill on their lips from the lake. Their bodies moved together, kicking steadily underneath the water. Jack started out gentle, but Sam wasn't as patient, and he found himself forgetting to tread. Not breaking the embrace, he began drawing Carter back towards the shore. Once they could reach bottom, he let Sam set the pace. She kissed her way up his neck slowly, and Jack shivered.

"Are you okay with this?" he asked.

"What do you think, Jack?" she countered, bringing her lips up under his ear.

He brought his hand to her face, traced his finger over her features so gently. "I want you to be sure," he said.

She moved away towards the shore but pulled Jack with her. He looked down at their joined hands with joy and slight bewilderment at his sudden turn of fortune. "Jack," she said. He brought his gaze level with hers as they reached the water's edge. "Take me inside."

* * *

Making love to Samantha Carter was like a benediction for Jack. He memorized every plane of her body, slid his hands down every curve of her back. He loved her without hesitation and showed a natural confidence in knowledge of her body.

She hesitated only slightly, right before he entered her. He paused, giving her one more chance to let things stay as they were. She took a deep breath and nodded, and he watched her blue eyes go wide as he moved inside her. They both released a rushed breath, and if Jack clasped Sam's hand a bit tighter, it was only expected. They found a like rhythm, and finally, finally, let themselves go.

That was how Jack O'Neill turned his heart completely over to Samantha Carter eleven months after the world ended.

* * *

The waterwheel worked. The first thing Jack did was crank on the air conditioner. He stood a full ten minutes underneath a vent with a huge smile on his face. Carter was plopped on the couch, checking to see if she could pick anything up on the TV. He smiled at her intensity and was just about to slide her over on the couch when he heard music coming from the television.

_Adagio For Strings_ filled the room. Stunned, Jack stared at the screen. The display was red with white font: "WE WILL NOT FADE AWAY." Underneath was a list of places and names.

Every three seconds, the screen changed and more names appeared. Occasionally, a new state title would break up the list and more names and states would appear. Arkansas. California. Kansas.

Vala Maldoran. Teal'c. Patrick Siler.

Jack did sit down, then, his legs collapsing out from under him. Sam let out a short hiccupping, hitched breath, and Jack when reached for her, she was blinking back tears.

Survivors.

"Cam should be listed there, Jack," she said. "It's my fault. It's _my_fault."

Jack wasn't sure what to make her words, but held her tight, the music playing under her sounds of tears while she cried away the last eleven months.

* * *

The stars were bright when he heard her join him outside. She approached the blanket he had spread out underneath his telescope. The scope was set low to the ground, and he was adjusting a setting when she slipped up behind him on the blanket and snuggled in.

"Anything interesting up there?"

"You'd be amazed if I told you," he said, waggling an eyebrow before putting his eye back to the scope.

"Hmm," she said, laying back and crossing her arms behind her head.

"Just as I suspected," he said. "Green cheese."

When she didn't respond he stretched out beside her. "Are you ready to talk about it yet?" he asked, tucking strands of her hair back behind her ear. He liked touching her, and she made happy sounds, so he continued run his fingers through her hair.

"Did you have a telescope as a kid?" Jack noted the topic change, but years spent waiting to be with her had made him a patient man.

"No," he said. "I was more the BB gun sort." He eased an arm under her and she cuddled in against him, with her arm roped around his midsection.

"I did," she said.

"I'm shocked," he teased. "I never pictured you as the science type." She stuck her tongue out at him, and he reached over and nuzzled her cheek.

"So, ever lie down under the stars like this?" he said. "Maybe with, I don't know, a BB gun kinda guy?" This time, she swatted his chest.

"As a matter of fact, I_did _lie down in the grass." When he started to make a snide comment, she slapped her hand over his mouth. "I wouldn't," she said. "Anyway, I would hold really still and see if I could feel the world moving."

"Did it work?" Jack pulled a piece of grass from the back of her shirt.

"I thought it did. I thought there was no stronger force than the dizzy feeling of knowing I was spinning hundreds and thousands of miles per hour but wasn't flying out into space." She was watching the moonlight over the water. The surface sparkled with gentle ripples.

"Gravity," said Jack.

"God," she replied. "Gravity was just a concept in my science book then. To me, it was just an act of faith, letting myself feel the spin."

"Do you still… ya know…, do the God thing?" He had always assumed that Carter would be a believer in empirical data rather than faith.

"Do you?" she countered.

"Yes," he said. "If nothing else, because I needed something else to hate besides myself after Charlie." He played with the ends of her hair; it was longer now, just brushing her shoulders.

"I believe…" Sam took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "What I believe is that gravity is immutable, and you never really know when you'll be flung out into nothing."

Jack cupped her chin, tipping her face up. "What else happened that day, Sam? What happened to Mitchell?"

She told him.

_Sam glanced down from the control room - Cam and Teal'c stood ready at the base of the ramp, and Daniel tried to corral Vala, who was flirting with Siler._

"_Just a few more minutes, guys," Sam said through the mic._

"_See?" Vala shook Daniel's hand from her arm. "We have a few more minutes." She made puppy-dog eyes at Siler while Daniel rolled his_

_Cam laughed loudly, while the edges of Teal'c's mouth curled in a positively blatant smirk._

_Just then, all of the chevrons lit up simultaneously. Sam tried to close the iris with no effect. The guys down in the Gate Room pulled their weapons before Harriman could even call the alert. Siler scrambled for the manual iris control._

"_What have we got, Colonel?" Landry appeared behind Sam._

"_I don't know, sir, but I recommend we get the Gate Room cleared until we know what it is," she said. She continued to pull up monitor checks, but everything appeared normal. "And we should probably get that iris up, sir."_

"_Agreed," he said. "Siler, Mitchell. Get that iris closed. Everyone else, out of the room. I want two marines at the door. Shoot anything that steps foot through that gate."_

_Sam called down to Siler, "What's the holdup, Sergeant?"_

"_I can't make our panel respond," he said. "Can you override from up there?"_

"_Hey Jackson, how about a hand over here if you're not gonna leave." Sam glanced down into the gate room. Daniel was standing in the middle of the floor, staring blankly at the wall._

"_Hey, Jackson." Cam snapped his fingers. "Got any ideas?"_

"_The power of the Ori will be felt far and wide, and the wicked shall be vanquished, as your leaders have already been."_

_Sam was watching Cam when Daniel spoke: she saw Cam's blue eyes flash wide in surprise and horror before her vision washed out as a bright flash of light pulsed. It cleared just in time to see Cameron Mitchell flying mid-air towards the ramp just as the gate kawooshed into life, its wake swallowing half of Cam's body._

"_No!" Cam's legs made a dull thump on the metal ramp._

_Daniel turned to face the Control Room. But he wasn't Daniel - he was a Prior ready to lead the wayward flock into destruction._

"_Daniel," she whispered. "Don't do this, Daniel."_

"_Hallowed be the Ori," he said as the Gate Room began to fill with light once again, and Sam knew Daniel was gone. She slammed the blast shield down and ducked under the control table just before the world went black._

* * *

Jack didn't press her again until a few nights later. Curled up together in the dark bedroom, Jack said, "When I first met you, I saw what you had inside you. Wonder. Fire. More idealism than should be allowed for someone with that much experience."

"Jack, I don't know that person anymore," she finally said. "I don't know who she is."

"You don't have to be the same person," he said. "I'm in love with the person you are now." He liked the words on his lips. "I love you, Sam." He let the dark give him courage and continued. "All I'm asking is that you try not to carry the ocean in a paper cup."

Suddenly her mouth was on his, frantic and strong. "You're my gravity, Jack," She whispered in his ear as she moved above him, and there was no more talking that night.

Jack woke up the next morning at dawn to find their bed Carterless and the cabin eerily quiet. Jack slipped on a gray T-shirt and shorts and headed out to the porch.

He could just make out Sam's silhouette down at the foot of the dock. She stood stock-still, holding a carrot out to their elk. Bucko edged forward, and reaching its long neck out, it slowly, slowly, nipped the carrot from Sam's palm before bolting back to the woods.

A smile broke across her face, genuine and open. She tilted that smile up to the sun and fell back into the grass, her arms flung wide open.

And it was in this manner one year after the world ended that Jack O'Neill witnessed Samantha Carter begin to forgive herself.


End file.
